Price won't approach cost until there's another competitor with similar costs. But China is heading strongly in that direction, working on a F9 clone (and perhaps more than one; there are many quasi-private launch efforts there). I'm sure Musk knows F9's life as a money-printing machine is finite.

>Or, since there's no downward pressure on price, it's equally valid to say we've hit the limit of what we can do with capitalism in the current ecosystem.

There is downward pressure, we're just hitting physical limits on what can be done with chemical rockets.